* * *
Sam Parish and those able to fight had opened the cache of weapons and armed themselves. Very heavily.
“Shirley just died, Sam,” a woman told him, pulling the blanket up to cover the dead woman’s face.
“Those ass-kissin’ government goons!” Sam cussed softly. “They’ll get theirs. This is war, people. War!”
Outside, the agents were getting into gear and preparing to move out. Twenty-five teams of five each. Every road and trail had been blocked off. There was no escape for those inside the armed circle. Rick Battle knew nothing about what was going on. A young couple had been reported lost in the far northern reaches of his area, and he was up there, directing a search party of volunteers.
* * *
“Oh, my God!” Kevin whispered. He lay on the crest of a small hill, overlooking Jody’s cabin. He could make out what he thought was the body of Linda, sprawled in the doorway. The bodies of four dead men were lined up in a row in the front of the house, covered with ponchos. Using the binoculars taken from the man he had shot, Kevin pulled the scene closer.
It was Linda lying still in the doorway.
“Shit!” Kevin said.
He backed away and headed for his cabin and his friends. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that his family and their friends were next on the list. He also knew who had done this: government agents. Kevin had been aware that he and his friends had been under surveillance for some time.
On the trail back to what was left of the commune, Kevin carefully wiped his prints off of the weapon taken from the dead agent, and the binoculars, and cached them. Then he returned to his cabin and broke the news to his wife and daughter and his friends.
* * *
“Hello, the cabin!” Dr. Ray Collier called.
The remaining rubber raft had been pulled onto shore, tents pitched, and a small fire built. Dr. Collier knew there was a hiking trail that ran along the river bluffs here, and hoped to find someone who could point the way to the ranger station, some miles away. Then he’d spotted what appeared to be a cabin set back several thousand feet from the river. What Ray was not aware of was that the hiking trail had been closed and this area sealed off by federal agents.
Dr. Collier looked rough. He had not shaved in several days, and his clothing was wrinkled and, unfortunately for him, army surplus. Ray Collier was not a small man. He was a shade over six feet and through regular exercise was in very good physical condition. While normally a very even-tempered and easy-going man, Dr. Collier could, when angered, have a very short fuse. He played football in high school and college, had his share of fistfights—until he learned that it was very unwise to strike a solid object with one’s bare hand. Lots of little bones in there that were easily broken and very painful and slow in healing. For the past fifteen years, Dr. Collier had been working out twice a week in an unarmed combat class. He was black belt certified. But he had not deliberately hurt anyone in two decades.
All that was about to change.
“Get on the goddamn ground, you asshole!” the hard voice sprang out from a shed beside the cabin. “We’re federal officers.”
Ray looked around him. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, belly down on the ground, you ass-wipe! Do it, goddamn you!”
Dr. Collier’s fuse suddenly shortened and was lit. His eyes found the cammie-clad and ski-masked man, holding what appeared to be some sort of machine gun in his black-leather gloved hands, and he very slowly and evenly said, “I don’t know what kind of game this is, buddy. And I don’t believe you’re federal officers. I don’t have very much money on me, but you’re welcome to it.”
Ray did not see the man rush up behind him. He heard him just at the last second and started to turn. Then his world went black as the butt of a rifle slammed into the back of his head, and Dr. Collier fell to the ground, unconscious.
* * *
“I say,” Nick Sharp said with his best smile, approaching the five-man team with his hands raised. “What is all this to-do about?”
“Get on the goddamn ground, buddy.”
“Oh, I think not,” Nick said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You either get on the ground or we’ll put you on the ground. Both of you.”
Nick and Dennis Tipton exchanged glances. The federal agents had no way of knowing it, but they were about to tangle with one of the toughest men on the face of the earth. As a matter of fact, they were about to anger a number of the toughest men on the face of the earth.
Nick Sharp and Dennis Tipton had been friends for years. Each of them had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion before his sixteenth birthday. After serving their hitches, Nick had joined Britain’s SAS, and Dennis had returned to the States and joined the American Army, finally ending his career as a sergeant in 7th Special Forces. They had spent the last ten years as mercenaries, fighting all over the world. They were extremely difficult to impress, and these agents standing before them did not inspire much confidence in them at all. They looked to be sloppy in appearance and handled their weapons very loosely and unprofessionally.
“Might I ask why we are being so rudely accosted?” Nick inquired.
A federal marshal and a young BATF man both cursed, then made another very bad mistake. Their first mistake was in sticking guns in the faces of men who had done nothing wrong (that tended to piss off a certain type of person), their second mistake was in cursing the men (that also tended to piss off a certain type of person), and then they got too close to the pair of mercenaries.
The federal marshal suddenly found himself unable to breathe because of a crushed larynx, and the BATF agent could not see because Nick had used his fingers to blind him. The other three feds had only a micro second to react, and they blew that chance.
When the smoke cleared away from the guns that had five seconds before been in the hands of federal officers, Nick looked at Dennis with a slight smile on his lips. “I say, Denny, do you suppose the shit’s in the soup now?”
Dennis laughed. “I reckon it is, Nick.”
“Help me!” the blinded agent cried.
“Not likely,” Nick told him; then he and Dennis took all the weapons and walked away.
* * *
“We stay here,” Darry told the women.
“Here” was a cave midway up a rocky ridge, the front of the cave brush-covered. Even people who had lived in the area for years did not know of its existence. The cave wandered for about a hundred yards, ending at a small pool of cold, pure spring water.
Stormy and Ki sank wearily to the cave floor. Pete and Repeat drank from the pool of water and then returned to lie down beside the women. Darry bellied down at the pool and drank (neither woman could see that he lapped at the water like an animal), then filled the canteens and went back to the mouth of the cave.
“I wonder what that brief bit of shooting just a few moments ago was all about?” Stormy asked.
“Bad luck for somebody,” Darry replied.
“What if they bring in tracking dogs?” Ki asked, after taking a sip of water.
Darry smiled. “They won’t bother us.” He uncased his binoculars, slipped outside, and bellied down behind the thick brush that covered the front of the cave entrance. He wriggled through the brush and scanned all the terrain that he could see. He could spot nothing. He slipped back into the cave and sat down.
“What do we do now?” Stormy asked.
“We wait.”
* * *
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Richard,” the agent said, after taking Ray’s wallet out of the small plastic bag Ray used to keep it dry. “The guy’s a doctor from Los Angeles.”
“He should have followed orders,” Richard said. “Done what he was told to do. Besides, what is a doctor from L.A. doing out here, dressed as he is. Fuck him. He’s a goddamn survivalist. He’s tied in somehow with all these armed groups living and training out here.”
“Ransom’s gone,” an agent called from th
e front porch of the cabin. “Looks like he grabbed some supplies and split.”
Richard nodded. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got to find that damned reporter and get that film.”
“What about the doctor?”
“Leave him. He didn’t see our faces.”
* * *
“I’m blind!” the agent screamed into his handy-talkie. “I’m blind. All the rest of my team is dead. Come in, come in.”
“Hang on, Ron,” the welcome reply finally came out of the tiny speaker. “We’re on the way. Just don’t move from your location. Who did it, Ron?”
“I don’t know,” Ron said, calming down. “Two guys. Bad-looking men. One of them spoke with an English accent.”
The rescue team members exchanged glances. Two guys took out five agents? Surely they must have ambushed them?
* * *
Army, Navy, and CIA came up on the body lying a few feet off the trail. “I saw this guy over at Darry Ransom’s cabin,” Johnny McBroon said, kneeling down beside the body. “Said he was a government agent.”
Johnny removed the wallet and opened it. “He’s National Security Agency. Al Reaux.”
“Don’t shoot, boys.” The voice spun the men around, guns in their hands. “The man stood with his hands in the air. I’m with Air Force Intelligence. Pete Cooper. ID’s in my back pocket.”
That was verified, and the four spooks stood in silence for a few heartbeats.
Pete said, “I came up on the body just before you guys arrived. There isn’t a mark on him. But I think his neck is broken.”
“His weapon’s gone,” Johnny said. “Al seemed to me a pretty tough customer. I wonder who took him out?”
* * *
Jody Hinds.
Wild with grief over the loss of his wife and friends, Jody was killing mad and on the prod. He’d come up on Al’s tracks and trailed him. When Al stopped to rest, Jody had slipped up behind him and snapped his neck as easily as breaking a toothpick. Jody had been part of a very elite air force group, innocuously called Combat Controllers, and he’d been well trained in the art of unarmed combat.
Jody had made his peace with God and was fully prepared to die. But he was going to take out a lot of federal agents before he met the Man.
* * *
Just before twilight darkened the land, Sam Parish and his bunch made their move. They suckered the guards in close and poured on the lead from automatic weapons. They left no one alive. They quickly prepared packs and made ready to take off. Racists and separatists they might be, but they were well trained and had planned for such an eventuality.
“You all know what to do,” Sam told them. “We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of here alive. By now the government is pouring in agents. There’ll be several hundred of those bastards in this area by dawn. We go down shooting, people. They’ll not get away with this cover-up. Let’s make damn sure of that. Good luck and God be with you. Power to the white race!”
The others shouted their slogan and split up, taking off in all directions.
* * *
“Mother! Come quick!” Paul shouted down from the bluff. “It’s Daddy. He’s been hurt.”
When Ray Collier had not returned, Paul had gone looking for him. Karen grabbed the first aid kit and took off at a run, Terri right behind her.
Ray was groaning and trying to sit up when Karen reached his side. “You know better, Ray,” she admonished him. “Just lie still and let me take a look at you.”
While his wife bathed the small cut on the back of his head and then applied antiseptic, Ray told them what had happened. As much as he knew.
“Federal officers?” Karen questioned. “That can’t be. They wouldn’t do something like this.”
Neither mother nor father saw the look that passed between brother and sister. The kids were much more “with it” than their parents. They both had friends whose homes had been raided by cops, local and federal, looking for drugs in the much overused and abused “Anonymous Tip” bullshit in the nation’s so-called War On Drugs. In the cases that Terri and Paul knew about, no drugs were found, but the house had been wrecked by the cops: stuffing pulled out of sofas and chairs, commodes torn loose, paneling ripped down, mattresses cut open, and pistols and cash taken. Paul and Terri were rapidly joining the ever-growing ranks of people who distrusted the cops and had absolutely no use for federal agents.
“I lost consciousness more than once,” Ray said. “Drifted in and out. I heard snatches of conversation. I really believe they were federal officers. They were talking about survivalists. There must be some sort of survivalist camp close by, and they thought I was one of them.”
Karen picked up her father’s wallet and plastic bag from the ground where it had been contemptuously tossed. “They didn’t take any of your money, Daddy.”
“This is outrageous!” Karen said, the attorney in her surfacing. “By God, somebody is going to answer in court for this.”
“It happens all the time, Mother,” Paul said softly.
Ray sat up and looked at his son. “What do you mean, Paul? ‘It happens all the time’?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Just what I said, Dad. About fifty or so percent of the paper money now circulating is tainted, to some degree or the other, with cocaine residue. A lot of people who carry large amounts of cash have been stopped and searched in airports and had their money seized. Sometimes they get it back; sometimes they don’t. The way I understand it, the cops don’t have to prove you were going to make a buy; you have to prove you weren’t. Innocent people have died from heart attacks when the cops kicked in their front doors in the middle of the night and manhandled them. All in the name of law and justice ...”
The parents were both staring in disbelief at their son. Karen had not practiced criminal law in years, but until she specialized, she had worked all sorts of cases for a few years.
“The people who choose to live out here in the wilderness,” Paul continued, waving a hand at Darry’s cabin. “Say . . . they’re racist or just believe in anything that goes against what the current Washington administration believes in, why, they get investigated by government agents. Sometimes the federal agents kill them.”
“Kill them?” Ray questioned, sitting on the ground. “Kill them!”
“Sure,” Terri picked it up. “I’ve seen specials on TV about that. There are survivalists all over the nation, arming themselves and stockpiling food and water and medicines and stuff like that. The government is going ape-crap about it.”
“Why?” Karen asked, enthralled and amazed that her children were so well-informed on a subject she knew practically nothing about.
“I guess the government is scared these people will start some sort of revolution,” the young woman answered. “But they seem to forget that this nation was built out of revolution. What’s the difference between then and now?”
12
Kathy had come out of it with a raging headache. Using water from her canteen, she cleaned her slight head wound and then went to work on Jack. The bullet had gone right through the fleshy part of Jack’s shoulder, and the bleeding had stopped. That was good. She bathed the wound, front and back, and applied antiseptic from her small first aid pouch, then bandaged the wound. Jack was awake, his eyes shiny with pain.
“Did we really see what I think we did?” Jack asked.
“We sure did. We’ve got to get out of here and report. This is a cluster-fuck, Jack.”
With a small groan of pain, Jack got to his boots and fumbled around for his compass. He took their bearings and pointed. “That way. But we’ll never make it to our camp before full dark. We’ll find a place to hole up.”
“That woman back at the cabin, Jack. She wasn’t armed.”
“I know it. Those guys killed her in cold blood.”
“Some of those men back there were Bureau people,” she reminded him.
“I know that, too.”
“Wh
at are we going to do?”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know, Kathy. I just don’t know.”
* * *
George Eagle Dancer found the tracks of Darry, the two women, and the dogs. But the animal tracks were slightly different from those of a dog. Hybrids, George thought. Part wolf. He followed the trail until it grew too dark to see; then George ate from a packet of MREs, wrapped a blanket around him, and settled in for the night.
* * *
Johnny McBroon, Pete Cooper, Lew Waters, and Jay Gilmore settled in for a cold night after eating field rations and washing them down with water from their canteens. They did not dare risk a fire for fear it would draw gunfire. They had heard about the escape of Sam Parish and about thirty of his followers over a small receiver Jay had in his pack. Nighttime was not the time to go blundering around in the wilderness.
* * *
Kevin and his friends bunkered in with lanterns and candles out and weapons ready. They had no way of knowing what the night would bring with it . . . but they were ready for trouble.
* * *
Paul Collier, after helping his father down the bluff and to his tent, went back up to Darry’s cabin and found a Winchester lever action rifle chambered for .22 magnum. He rummaged around and found three boxes of ammunition and a cartridge belt. “If I can’t get the rifle back to you, mister, I’ll pay you for it, and that’s a promise,” he whispered to the empty cabin.
He filled the cartridge belt and buckled it around his waist, pulling his shirttail out to cover it. He wrapped the rifle in a piece of torn tarp and hid it in the rocks halfway down the bluff. Paul was still in the Boy Scouts—al—though he seldom went to meetings anymore—and he had been trained in how to handle a rifle. He had made up his mind that nobody was going to rough up his dad again. Nobody.
* * *
Nick Sharp and Dennis Tipton caught up with the other team members and told them what had taken place back in the now bloody little spring-flowered meadow where the federal agents had confronted them.
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